You might be interested in noting that by removing the DBI connect call, if your function has no need to process returned rows (such as via a 'select' statement), your function is then somewhat equivalent to the 'do' method in DBI.
Dear Fastolfe,
You're right, too. I'll see if I can use do instead on my inserts and updates. Thanks, I really appreciate all of the input I've gotten. -timallen